Eduroam replaced UOG Wireless as the campus’ internet connectivity network on Nov. 1, and this may be welcoming news for students and faculty who have experienced issues with the internet and Wi-Fi connection.
Eduroam’s internet operates at 150 megabytes per second—an upgrade to the old connection speed.
“It’s designed for higher education research networks,” said Rommel Hidalgo, UOG’s chief information officer.
Eduroam, a global education roaming internet connectivity service, was first developed by Géant, the data network for the European Union and eventually implemented by Internet2, the data network for the United States.
This network transition comes with a multitude of benefits for students, faculty and staff that before had not been available.
Prior to the implementation of Eduroam, students had to visit the UOG Computer Center and have their devices registered into the network. If students changed their devices, they had to return to the Computer Center to register those devices as well.
This is not so with Eduroam, which offers the conveniences of self-service and single sign-on. Students simply have to know their UOG email address and Triton Portal password to have wireless connectivity via Eduroam anywhere on campus on any device, using the same address and password for various academic accounts.
Eduroam accounts remain active for as long as a student attends UOG, and allows access to campus resources such as the Microsoft Office 365 system.
Furthermore, being connected through this new network enables users to be connected to places around the globe that also have implemented Eduroam, such as the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, and the United States.
For students who go off-island for academic research purposes, Eduroam is a useful tool.
“For whatever research you’re doing as a student, it gives you instant connectivity,” Hidalgo said. “If you’re a student and you need internet access outside of Guam, and you just happen to be near an Eduroam implementation, you’ll suddenly start seeing your data access updating your mobile devices.”
As an added bonus, this is good news for those who do not wish to pay often steep data roaming fees.
Likewise, global visitors who utilize Eduroam, get instant connectivity from UOG.
Campus reacts
For computer science major Kristian Cercado, internet speed is not as important as internet reliability.
“If it keeps dropping, I’m not saying that it has, but if that does happen I think that would be more of an issue for me,” Cercado said.
Hidalgo and his team are currently working at renewing UOG’s access points for improved capability and faster speed. They estimate that in 12 months, speed will be at one gigabyte.
Despite the supposed faster speed, faculty, staff, and students who are now connected with Eduroam say the connection seems to be having a few hiccups.
Andrea Sant, Ph.D., division chair of English and Applied Linguistics, is experiencing issues in the classroom with tasks such as accessing Moodle and online teaching material.
“I’ve signed up for it on my laptop, and I tried to use it in my classroom and the problems that I experience are when I’m trying to stream videos,” Sant said.
Sant suggests a remedy for this issue.
“I would love to see the classrooms hard-wired with at least one monitor or one access to a point that isn’t wireless,” Sant said.
Cercado feels that the internet speed is actually slower than UOG Wireless.
“It wasn’t as satisfactory as UOG Wireless, but it’s still starting out,” Cercado said.
However, he recalled having difficulties connecting to UOG Wireless in different areas on campus and is hopeful that Eduroam will remedy this issue in due time.
For more information about the features of Eduroam, students can go to eduroam.uog. edu.
The UOG Computer Center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. They also have a 24-hour support line at 735-2640.